Five
by Insert a Catchy Penname Here
Summary: Naturally, I choose the one with the red mark across it's left gills. He/She/It reminds me Gus, but I name him/her Nemo.


Five

It has been three months, ninety one days, over one million struggled breaths since the his last. I still miss him, then again, I always will. There are still days I wake up and want nothing more than to talk to him, and that is all I really do on days like that. As he said, pain demands to be felt, so I call up Issac and we stay on the phone for hours or meet up somewhere relatively remote. We don't say much, but we don't need too. We have each other.

My mom ventured into my room on one of those days, though she usually tries to restrain herself from disturbing my crippling episodes of grief until they subside, at least as of recent. She sat beside me, held my hand, and informed me that we would be having dinner with Mister and Mrs. Waters that night.

About noon I met Issac in my backyard. We sat in the vacant spot where my swing set once was, quiet again, but this time I spoke up first. "We're having dinner with his parents tonight."

"Huh." He says, then the silence returns for a few more minutes. "That's nice."

"Nice," I repeat, then sigh. "Maybe it's supposed to be an alternate to group therapy. Like my parents are trying to get us to all come together as a grieving community to accept the inevitably of Augustus Waters."

He manages a rueful smile. "That wouldn't surprise. Or maybe they're just trying to help them, too. I'm pretty sure they're still feeling pain, too."

"I'll consider that a possibility as well, but I like my theory better." We both laugh and then grow silent again.

Issac and I could both agree that his parents are nice people, which they are, but they don't understand the same pain that I'm going through anymore than my parents do. We all loved Gus and lost him at the same time, but it is not the same grief for all of us. His parents still have their two daughters and grandchildren, and they have each other, and then I'm still alive for parents sake and they still have each other. More like me, Issac still does not have Monica and no best friend, but he not love Augustus the same way I did and still do.

That isn't to say that they all don't deserve to feel their own separate versions of pain, but if this trying to help us all continue grieving together, it won't work. I appreciate my parents efforts for at least trying to continue to understand.

"I should go," Issac says when his ironically placed watch beeps. "I have another pointless trip to Doctor We Might Have Find a Cure For Your Eyes but Oops, Just Kidding."

I chuckle and help him to his feet and into the front yard where his mother will be waiting soon enough. We stand together until she does come, and as she pulls into the drive he turns back in my direction.

"Who knows?" He thinks out loud. "Maybe you'll all actually have one of those ABC Family 'You Understand Too!' moments and you'll cry together like a big old broken long lost family."

"I'll call you over if that happens. Wouldn't want you missing out on that," I reply smartly, but I do smile before I turn back inside to put on the dress my mother is making me wear.

**ooooo**

As it turns out, we do not, in fact, have an ABC Family 'You Understand Too!' moment in the midst of eating our casserole and chocolate pie. Instead, I listen to mine and his father discuss sports while my mother and his mother exchange recipes. We do not bring up Gus in the duration of this, so I am left to eat my food slowly and nod along when my name is brought up. I wish I really had invited Issac along; at least we could laugh at the irony of both of our false theories together.

"Hazel?" I glance up and realize everyone's looking at me expectantly. Apparently the two conversation merged into one without my realizing, and I am apparently to be included in this one.

"Sorry, what?" I push away my plate and his mother smiles thinly.

"I asked how therapy was going," she says, not unkindly.

"Oh. It's fine. He's still Patrick, Issac's still Issac." I smile thinly myself and we share a light chuckle. "How's...home life?"

She gets quiet, but his father jumps in for a save. "It's...alright. Work is still steady, Julie and Martha come over quite a bit these days. We got a goldfish tank."

"Oh, wonderful. Did you get any fish to go with it?" I ask teasingly and this prods out a light laugh out of everyone, this time with myself included.

"Yes, we did. Five." His mother smiles sadly, and I get the metaphor. Five, just like his family used to be.

Silence falls over the table for the first time since they arrived as my mother cleans up the dishes and puts them in the dish washer. I get up and begin to do them just to escape the silence, and I'm nearly finished before his father speaks up again.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, Hazel, but we were hoping that you'd pick out a fish to add. Five is such an odd number, after all," he tells me, and I can hear the still-lingering grief in his voice.

A tear falls down my face. It's their way of letting me into their family, of saying that I am as much their child as Julie, Martha, or Gus, and I'm grateful. "Of course I will."

**ooooo**

My mother offers to come with me into the store the following morning but I decline. I roll Phillip into Wal Mart, all the way back into the aquarium section where about fifteen tanks are set up with various types of fish. I check out the classical goldfish section, as the others would likely eat or be eaten via their future tankmates, and am met with fleeting options: A speckled otherwise albino, three bright orange, a dark orange, two with matching black dots on their fins, and one with a dark red mark across it's left gills.

Naturally, I choose the one with the red mark across it's left gills. He/She/It reminds me Gus, but I name him/her Nemo.

**ooooo**

That afternoon I go to his home, Nemo bumping consistently into the bag I received him/her in. I knock on the door with my foot, since I don't want to successfully kill my aquatic friend before twenty four hours of receiving has passed. His mother answers and hugs me tightly, but she is careful of the bag cradled in my hands.

"Did you name it?" She inquires as she motions me in, where there is a ten gallon tank with five promised goldfish swimming about inside.

"Nemo." We share a small smile and she shows me how to put the bag in so Nemo can adjust to the water temperatures before I pour him/her in and cause hydration shock.

This apparently takes thirty to forty five minutes, so she gives me a cup of tea and we sit together. His father is at work, so she watches the news and I watch the fish. They take interest in Nemo and his/her back at first, bumping against just as consistently as he/she, but eventually they grow bored and swim off in various directions.

I note that two brightest colored orange ones seem to quite like each other, and the one with white dots doesn't seem to like any of them, as he/she hovers near the bottom constantly. I sympathize with my aquatic cousin for being introverted.

"Even the fish have social boundaries," I muse.

She chuckles and turns down the volume, looking over herself. "They do, don't they?"

"That's weird. They're just as bad as humans at socializing with their own kind." I carefully slip off my shoes and tuck my feet behind me on the large, stuffed recliner.

She lifts herself from the couch and kneels down, raising a thin eyebrow. "You're right. What do you bet we're not the only ones who think that?"

Her bringing up Gus still hurts a little too much to discuss much aloud, so I change the subject. "Have you named them?"

"Well, no. Gerard and I don't have enough imagination for that." She glances to me and smiles a little. "Would you like to name them, Hazel?"

I pause. It doesn't feel right to just walk in their home and name their pets, but she'll insist if I tell her that. So instead, I request to invite Issac over to assist me and she agrees, maybe a little too quickly, and I call him.

"Don't ask," I state as she hurries to the kitchen. "But I need you to go to Wal Mart, get a goldfish, and meet with at Gus's house in thirty minutes or less."

"Consider it done."

**ooooo **

Apparently Issac was taken to a more high class store than Wal Mart, because he arrives with a large goldfish with three small, brown stripes along the underside of his/her belly. (He insists it's a he.) While the bag sits next to mine and Nemo bumps against it longer than the others, I describe to him the activity in Tank Life.

"So the orange one with white dots is still at the bottom of the tank," I note. "And the dark orange one keeps swimming laps around the tank. The two really orange ones may or may not be making fish Happy Time, and the other kind of dark orange one is staring out of the glass walls and thumping against it."

"I say we call our two aquatic lovers the Cheerleader and the Jock," he decides almost before I finish. "Our more typical love connection."

"Oh? So we're naming the metaphorically symbolic fish after annoying high school cliques?" I raise an eyebrow and pointedly force his fingertips to feel it, and he grins.

"Why not? You said yourself they're acting like it." He gives me an innocent shrug and I have to laugh.

"Fine, then we're naming the white dotted one the Misunderstood Loner." I turn back to the tank. "And yes, I have concluded that Cheerleader and Jock are conceiving fish babies, or at least trying too."

"TMI." He makes a face but laughs, too. We proceed to laugh longer than we should and harder than we should until tears are going down our faces and Gus's mother is repeatedly asking whether or not we need water.

Once we've caught our breaths, or at least as much I'm able, I glance back over to the tank and assist him in letting his fish out of his bag. He flits over to everyone, bumping against them in what I can only imagine is 'Hello' in Fish, before bumping along the top. I narrate this to Issac and he cracks a grin.

"Reminds me of him," he says wistfully.

I decide it's time to change the subject again. "The one that keeps bumping against the wall should be the Brain."

"How is trying to penetrate the confines of Tank Life smart?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Because at least he's trying to be more than what he is," I state, and he gives me a grin.

"That was poetic, so I'll take it." He reaches out and touches the glass. "The other dark orange one should be the Athlete, because he's obviously keeping his diet in check."

"Wonderful. He's now my least favorite," I say sarcastically and we start laughing again, and this time Gus's mother forces us to take a break from the fish naming business and drink some water and eat some fresh pie at the table.

"You know, I'm really glad you two are still such great friends." Issac's mother gives us both a gentle smile.

"Yes, I agree." Gus's mother nods in agreement and squeezes both our hands, and I bump Issac lightly with my shoulder.

"Yeah, me too." He bumps me back and grins in my direction. "I'm kind of stuck with her at this point, right?"

"Right. I am your master, slave, and you can never leave my clutches," I state, and we share a grin, but we are grateful for each other in more ways than one. We need each other to be anchors on our various days of crippling grief, therefore we are there for each other.

Gus's father arrives shortly after this, and the five of us make casual small talk before Issac and I ease back into the living room. His fish keeps bumping into Nemo, who keeps flitting away, and we begin to debate the naming of our final fish.

"I say we name him the Desperate Flirt," I offer.

"We are not naming my obviously manly fish the Desperate Flirt," he states. "He neds something more macho."

"What's 'macho' about flirting with Nemo?" I counter.

"How do you know they're flirting? He could just be trying to have a bro chat and Nemo's being a total douche about it." He gestures to the tank and nearly knocks it over. "Oops."

We continue debating over my name choice before he blurts out, "Or we could name him Metaphor!"

"Metaphor?" I repeat.

"Yeah. He and Nemo broke the 'metaphorically symbol' number of five fish, therefore he will resolve by being named Metaphor," he justifies, and I feel tears in my eyes as he wipes at his own, because obviously that reminds us of Augustus.

"I think he'd like it, too." I decide, wiping a few stray ones from my cheeks. "As a matter of fact, he should approve of all of our fish names."

He smiles again and we share a fist bump. We don't need any more talking right now, not even once the adults decide to move their political debating into the living room with us, but we don't have to have it. We have each other.


End file.
